Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out - A Letter From a Comedian To College Students Everywhere

Episode Date: October 26, 2020

This episode is a little different from the others. If you like it please share it with your college age friend or family member. Also, it’s worth visiting https://votesaveamerica.com/

Hey, everybody. This is a very special episode of Working It Out. No guests this week. It's just a little mini episode of a piece of writing that I did called A Letter from a Comedian to College Students Everywhere About Voting. If you like it, share it with friends, share it with your college-age relative or friend. Enjoy. The other night I had a dream that I got into Harvard. And I woke up and I was so upset because not only did I not get into Harvard, but I'm 42.

The dream has obvious transparent meanings about aging and failure. And in some ways, dreams are really like a heavy-handed play. Like you get to your seat and they say, tonight the role of your mother will be played by your wife. And the usher comes over and it's your seventh grade bully, and he says, You can't go to the bathroom till the end. Anyway, enough about dreams. I want to talk about voting.

Here's the deal. I am you in the future. I'm 42 years old, and I can remember being 20 like it was yesterday. I mean, if you told me when I was 20 that I would be married and have a five-year-old daughter and I would care passionately about voting, I would say, step away from my horse and buggy, sir. This is an outrage. I mean, honestly, I wouldn't have bought it. I would have thought, I'm not going to live until 42. And if I lived until 42, why would I want to get married? And if I got married, why would I thought, I'm not going to live until 42. And if I lived until 42, why would I want to get married? And if I got married, why would I want to have a child?

I still haven't figured out the answers to all of those questions. But lately, I've gotten into voting. Here's what I have to say. When I was your age, I didn't vote. It's embarrassing. It was the year 2000, and the Clinton-Gore administration was depressing to me, and George W. Bush seemed neither compelling nor scary, and so I didn't vote. And the election was so close that it went to the Supreme Court. And the events that followed that election are so frustrating to me, that followed that election are so frustrating to me, and they so do not fit with my personal values that it drives me crazy. But that's on me. I didn't vote. So why didn't I vote? First of all, I didn't have an address. I sort of lived on my sister Gina's couch in Brooklyn. I sort of lived with my parents. I sort of lived with my girlfriend in Washington, D.C., but she wanted to get married, and I wasn't sure that's what I wanted, and so it sort of just sat there in the air for a while. Anyway, there wasn't an area for all of that information on the form.

The second reason I didn't vote was I didn't know anything. I'm 42 years old now, and I'm here to tell you from the future that I still don't know anything. I've read hundreds of books. I've retained very little. I find that when you start to zoom out on your own life, you realize that you don't know a lot, but you probably know enough. My advice, if you want it, You probably know enough. My advice, if you want it, research three or four issues that you care about.

Find out where your local politicians stand on those issues, and that's enough. That's more than most people do. If you want to know everything on your ballot, go to this site called votesaveamerica.com and use the make a plan function where you type in your zip code and it tells you where all your down-ballot candidates stand on various issues.

It's a phenomenal site. And if you use it, you'll know some stuff, which, if you're like me, is more than you knew previously. In conclusion, I do not know who you should vote for. I don't know you personally. I don't know what's meaningful to you. But I do not know who you should vote for. I don't know you personally. I don't know what's meaningful to you. But I do know this. You are voting for the country that you want to live in.

Not today or tomorrow or even in the next year or two. You will live in the country you voted for when you're 42. When you're my age. I'm writing to you from the future. Good luck.